Hello, welcome everyone to another episode of Dharma Lab. I’m very honored and excited to be here with our two guests. Of course, I’m here with Richie Davidson, who many of you already know, one of the most well-known neuroscientists on the planet. And we’re here with a true icon of the world’s meditative tradition, Sharon Salzberg, who’s also a dear friend, and truly one of those people who, when the history books are written about the manifestation of these meditative traditions in the modern world, played an incredibly important role.

Just before this started, we were all chatting, and Sharon, you were mentioning that this is the 50th anniversary of the Insight Meditation Society. IMS, as it’s commonly referred to, is certainly one of the first and one of the most important centers for Buddhist practice and meditation in the modern world. Sharon is one of the co-founders of IMS, back in the 1970s. It’s hard to believe it’s been 50 years.

She has written some of the most well-known books in the meditation world. Loving-Kindness — she literally wrote the book on loving-kindness, and has been the main proponent of it as one of the main forms of meditation coming out of the Buddhist tradition, traditionally known as metta. She also has a podcast, Metta Hour, which both Richie and I have been on. And she’s written many other books, including her first children’s book, Kind Carl.

Richie Davidson

I read it to my six-year-old granddaughter, who loved it, absolutely loved it, and wanted more copies to give to all her friends.

Cort Dahl

And many, many other books — Real Life, Real Love, Real Happiness, a whole series. Loving-Kindness, the book I mentioned first, is really a modern classic. It was one of the first books I read back in the nineties when I was starting to meditate. So, Sharon, you’ve been an inspiration to so many of us — through your writing, through co-founding IMS, through your endless teaching all over the world. It’s an honor to have you.

I thought we could start with a story I’ve heard a few times and always found moving: His Holiness the Dalai Lama visiting the United States for the first time, and your interactions with him. Let’s start there, and see where the conversation goes.

(03:33) The Dalai Lama and the crutches

Sharon Salzberg

Sure. And I’m so happy and honored to be with the two of you, truly. We co-founded the retreat center — Jack Kornfield, Joseph Goldstein and I — in 1976. It’s in Barre, Massachusetts, about 40 minutes from Amherst. In 1979 we heard the Dalai Lama was coming to Amherst, so, being young and bold, we wrote a letter to his private office and said, maybe you’d like to visit us too. And to our amazement, we got a letter back saying, yes, he’ll come.

It was an incredibly zooey day. We had sheriffs and people patrolling the roof with guns, the street blockaded. A very intense day. And I’d been in a car accident a few weeks before — I had a broken bone in my foot and was using crutches, which I was not very skilled with. So I was standing way at the back of about a hundred people. His car pulled up, he got out, and he did something I’ve seen him do many times since, but it was the first time. It’s almost like he has a kind of radar for who in a crowd is suffering the most, and that was me. He cut through a hundred people, took my hand, looked me in the eye, and said, what happened?

Standing there in the back, I’d been thinking, I’m so stuck back here, this is terrible — I helped start this place, and here I am at th...